The Caucus |
Honoring Dr. King with Aretha Franklin and Wynton Marsalis

Site Search Navigation

Search NYTimes.com

Loading...

See next articles

See previous articles

Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

Supported by

Honoring Dr. King with Aretha Franklin and Wynton Marsalis

By Jon Pareles January 20, 2009 10:01 amJanuary 20, 2009 10:01 am

Aretha Franklin performing at the Kennedy Center.( Ruth Fremson/The New York Times)

The intersection of Martin Luther King Day with Inauguration Eve for Barack Obama was too richly symbolic for any performer to resist. The Kennedy Center presented, in different halls at overlapping times, Wynton Marsalis and Aretha Franklin (who would go on to sing “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” at the swearing-in ceremony). Ms. Franklin performed at “Let Freedom Ring,” named after the gospel choir that backed her up, which has performed an annual Martin Luther King Day concert since 2003. Mr. Marsalis presided over the eclectic “A Celebration of America,” telecast live on CNN, that portrayed jazz as democracy in its purest form.

“Let Freedom Ring” was a concert that also included a lifetime achievement award presented by Georgetown University to Marian Wright Edelman, the crusader against childhood poverty. When Ms. Franklin arrived, in a majestic red dress, she turned the concert into an explosive gospel memorial to Dr. King, with whom the teen-aged Ms. Franklin traveled and sang at civil-rights rallies.

She included one secular song, “Chain of Fools,” among gospel standards that unleashed all her vocal glories: tender insinuations and ringing exhortations, jazzy syncopations and hymnlike sustained lines, spiraling upward swoops and plunges into her low register, notes that rasped and notes that pealed. Handclapping and harmonizing with joyful faces, the choir pushed Ms. Franklin to preach and improvise, affirming her faith and singing “Hallelujah!” Nothing would stop her from praising Jesus, she declaimed: “I’ll stand up and tell it in the White House!” On Tuesday morning, she would go on to sing “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” with the same rising gospel fervor and celebratory flourishes as she repeated “let freedom ring, let it ring!”

“A Celebration of America” was a fully packed program, with Mr. Marsalis’s own Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, narration from Angela Bassett and Courtney Vance and genre-straddling guests, from a high-school jazz band to the Alvin Ailey dance company. In a video dialogue, Mr. Marsalis and the former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor compared jazz ensembles and the workings of constitutional democracy. But when Mr. Marsalis picked up his trumpet, playing “These Foolish Things” as a duet with the pianist Dave Brubeck or “Sweet Georgia Brown” with a snappy tapdancer, Jason Grimes, and musicians who extrapolate from country and blues — Mark O’Connor on violin, Bela Fleck on banjo and Derek Trucks on slide guitar–he was impish and sly, elegantly playful and far from didactic. The jam session trumped the civics lesson.

Correction: An earlier version of this post erroneously referred to the concert and the choir as “Let Freedom Sing.” Both are called “Let Freedom Ring.”

It was a HUGH disappointment that the CNN telecast of “A Celebration of America” was cancelled. There was a vast audience across the USA that was denied the joy of seeing this very special musical celebration. That also applies to the “Let Freedom Ring” concert. Hopefully both were taped for future telecasts. There IS an vast audience waiting to hear our music! Believe!!

President Obama drew criticism on Thursday when he said, “we don’t have a strategy yet,” for military action against ISIS in Syria. Lawmakers will weigh in on Mr. Obama’s comments on the Sunday shows.Read more…